I probably should have spent more time getting a better newsprint image to work with but I was anxious to give something a try. After using this method for making a magnifying glass, I thought I might try something different.

1. Using several layers of gradients to create the shading, I created a ball and then reduced the opacity to about 25 or 30 %, added a colored mask, made a gloss layer, a glow layer and a shadow layer. 2. I duped the shadow layer, reduced the layer scale, and used Iwarp to deform the inner portion. I then deleted the extraneous overlapping areas and the areas outside the ball to make it look like a distorted reflection. 3. I duped the newsprint layer and rectangle selected an area about 200% of the size of the orb and copied it to a new image and applied Map to Sphere with no light and transparent background. 4. I copied this sphere layer to the original image and pasted as a new layer. It appears that the Map to Sphere operation has to be done separately from the original image layers. 5. Since I haven't discovered the exact formula for sizing the original selection, I had to play with the "sphere" layer to get it just the right size, then placed the layer below the orb layers.

There was a lot of trial and error so please forgive me if this doesn't resemble a real tutorial, but I thought it was worth sharing.

Thank you for the kind words. I find it really amazing that tutorials and effects I struggled with and gave up on just one year ago, seem to be much less of a struggle now. Still have a long way to go to get to that level of realism that elicit's the "wow" factor in all who see it. Someday I'll get a wild hair and learn inkscape, blender and other programs that can create images like these.....

I got ninja'd several by several people while taking the pictures below.

A solid glass ball is a very, very short focal length lens. The objects on the other side are either extremely magnified (very close) or inverted and miniature (distant). I would not expect to see the shadow through the ball.

Here is a picture of a solid quartz sphere on an oak floor. Quartz has a higher refractive index than glass, so the effect is more extreme. The dark layer on the bottom is actually from the far wall of the room.

This is a "glass" (probably Pyrex) bead I found in a kitchen drawer.

---Rod - the speed of dark is the same as the speed of light. Otherwise fiber-optic transmission cables wouldn't work.